To the Editor:

Re: “Profs urge a stop to construction on Milstein Hall,” Letters, Feb. 6

A group of Cornell professors and other members of the University have expressed vigorous opposition to the forthcoming construction of Milstein Hall, an addition for Cornell’s Architecture programs. Plans for the hall were presented in public two years ago by the architect, Rem Koolhaas. The group’s opinion appeared in a Feb. 6 letter to The Sun, and in a motion to be debated by Faculty Senate tomorrow.

I was surprised by the group’s opinion, and disappointed. Despite the challenging financial environment, President Skorton has commendably deemed the Milstein project critical to the University. The group, by contrast, while engaged and well-meaning in its worries, is prosaic in its thinking. I find this failure of imagination distressing in a great and dynamic university.

Cornell is proud to host the top-ranked undergraduate architecture program in the U.S. The program has suffered in grossly inadequate facilities for decades, and as a direct consequence has been at constant risk of losing its professional accreditation. It is surely self-evident that, to a greater degree than any other University project, this desperately-needed architectural work needs to do more, intellectually, than simply “house” architecture. Koolhaas is among the world’s most brilliant and respected architects; the design he unveiled is effective, cost-conscious and bold.

The group finds the Milstein design “provocative and setting-discordant,” “atavistic” and a “flamboyant individual statement.” They hope for a building “respectful of ... historical setting.”

I do not.

The books I read, the music to which I listen, the art I admire, none of these are “respectful of historical setting.” Should students at a great university learn to think for themselves in a mundane neo-gothic pastiche? I urge the group to think again.

Prof. Adrian Lewis

Operations Research and Information Engineering